Less than half of businesses actively measure performance of recruiters when hiring permanent staff

According to BrightPool, of those employers that do formally evaluate recruiters’ effectiveness, just 25% monitor candidate retention to the end of their probation period as a metric.

In addition, one quarter of those that have measurement systems in place do not evaluate recruiters’ performance in terms of the proportion of the candidates offered a role who actually take up their employment.

Instead, the primary focus is on their delivery of front-end criteria set out in service level agreements – principally their speed and accuracy in identifying suitable candidates at the outset.

Angela Hickmore, Managing Director, BrightPool, comments: “Companies are only as good as the people they employ. With such significant levels of investment in recruitment, businesses are missing an opportunity if they don’t actively measure the quality of the agencies they use at all, or crucially, monitor ROI over the medium to longer term.”

“Measuring on-going outcomes - such as candidate retention and ongoing career progression - as well as initial inputs like numbers of CVs submitted, is vital if firms are going to see a real return on their investment. Employers need more from their recruitment provider than just plucking names from a database, they need quality candidates cherry-picked who are likely to add value months and years on from their appointment.”

“Applying performance management principles can be a powerful tool for employers to ensure that they are getting the best from their recruiters, just as it is for the staff they supply. As the market becomes increasingly sophisticated, it’s going to become more and more important for recruiters to be able to prove their worth.”

According to BrightPool’s research, all (100%) of those that do currently monitor recruiters’ performance said that the top three critical performance indicators they look at are: the length of time taken to hire each candidate the amount of suitable CVs submitted to the client resulting in an interview and the selection of quality interviewees from which to make an employment offer.

Angela Hickmore adds, “Recruiters who really want to meet their clients’ needs have to understand what’s actually important to them in the first place, but they should also be looking to exceed expectations by providing a comprehensive service from the start of the process to the finish.”

“This requires specialists with detailed market understanding and sophisticated sourcing and candidate evaluation techniques across a range of criteria. In addition, a good recruiter should be able to provide on-going post-offer support and candidate development tracking in order to deliver quality personnel with staying power and the potential to progress.”

For high volume contract staff, just 56% have measurement systems

BrightPool points out that that for high volume recruitment (for example teams of call centre staff, claims handlers or remediation staff), the number of firms who measure recruiters’ performance, while slightly higher, is still very low. Just 56% of respondents said that they actively do so.

However, recruiters’ role in terms of maximising the likelihood of staff retention is more important when hiring large numbers of contractors on a contingent basis, with two-thirds of those that have measurement systems in place saying they evaluate this.

Speed to hire, suitability of applicants put forward for interview and choice of quality interviewees from which to make a job offer were all still viewed as the top three priority issues. However, not all respondents measure each of these factors when it comes to high-volume recruiting: for all three the proportion fell to just over 80%.

Says Angela Hickmore, “The productivity, performance and the retention of contractors are critical indicators of ROI in contract roles so it’s vital that recruiters focus on more than just getting positions filled quickly. That’s why our BrightPool Connect technology, which enables clients to monitor these three critical factors, is proving to be such a valuable tool.”

BrightPool Connect is an online service which puts clients in control of all their assignments by providing them with a range of management information on retention, productivity, so they can see which contractors are delivering the best quality work at the best value for money. BP Connect also offers clients a detailed resource planning tool which allows them to identify, retain and often promote performing contract staff.

“When it comes to resource hungry high volume recruitment, churn is major issue,” adds Hickmore.

“Employers are keen to limit the amount of staff turnover in order to keep recruitment and training costs down and maintain quality and consistency of service, so they are looking for recruits with staying power as well as the right skills. It’s part of the job of a good recruiter to deliver this.”

“Given that employers are dealing with recruitment on such a large scale, hiring sometimes hundreds of candidates at a time, you would expect that performance measurement of the recruiters they use to help them would be more widespread.”